Now What? After the Presidential Election – The Tikkun Strategy Conference and 30th Anniversary Celebration in Berkeley, Ca. Nov. 12 and 13

Join Us for Tikkun’s Strategy Conference and 30th Anniversary Celebration

November 12th and 13th in Berkeley, CA (Co-Sponsered by the Metta Center for Nonviolence)!

Filmmaker and 2016 Tikkun Award recipient Oliver Stone.

What: A two-day strategy conference for liberals and progressives about what direction the left should take after the results of the November election and a ceremony on Sunday to give out the Tikkun Award to a few of the many people whose lives are embodying Tikkun‘s message of global healing and transformation. This year’s awards feature noted peace activist and singer Holly Near, award-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone (most recently, the new movie “Snowden”), Rabbi Arik Ascherman (for 21 years chair of Rabbis for Human Rights), Stanford history professor and editor of the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Clayborne Carson, cultural anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Aaron Davidman (creator of “Wrestling with Jerusalem”), Fania E. Davis (co-founder and executive director of Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth), and more! We also want to “honor the activists,” so if you are one, come! If you know some, invite them to come! And if you would like to honor those people who have been activists, come! But come also if you simply want to participate in thinking through the challenges facing us in American society in the coming 4-8 years (not just in electoral politics, but in changing the direction of our society).

Current members of the Network of Spiritual Progressives and Subscribers to Tikkun and/or 2016 Donors to Tikkun or the NSP: $15 for both days. (If you received the Summer 2016 issue of Tikkun in the mail, you are in these categories, if you did not but have renewed/subscribed since this issue, emailStaci@tikkun.org to confirm.)

Both days: $25 (plus you will receive a free one year electronic subscription to Tikkun Magazine).

Saturday only: $10

Sunday only: $20 (This includes the Tikkun Awards).

Registration at the door: $5 additional for Saturday, $10 additional for the whole conference and for Sunday only.

Special circumstances and can’t afford the price in the sliding fee scale?: Tell us what that problem is by calling Staci at 510 644 1200 or emailing at staci@tikkun.org and she will try to work out something that works for you.

Join us for an inspirational, dynamic, and joyous weekend where the Tikkun community (including our interfaith, secular-humanist-and-atheist-welcoming Network of Spiritual Progressives) and the Metta Center for Nonviolence will strategize what’s next for liberals and progressives following the results of the November election, and how can we bring into the liberal and progressive movements a new level of psychological and spiritual sophistication to counter the continuing growth of fascistic and racist tendencies that surfaced in the 2016 election.

This visionary weekend will feature two parts: a strategy conference to discuss and strengthen our collective vision of what progressive politics should look like (a positive vision of what we as progressives actually believe in, not simply an understanding of what we are against), and a ceremony/celebration of individuals who we think are already pioneering their vision of love in the world.

Why a Strategy Conference? Liberal and progressive activists, intellectuals and ordinary folk made an amazing contribution to American society this past year by pushing into the mainstream progressive ideas that have long been marginalized by the media, importantly issues around economic inequality, racism, the incredible burden of student loans, and the deepening environmental crisis. So Tikkun magazine, the voice of Jewish and interfaith progressives as well as secular humanists and atheist progressives, and the Metta Center for Nonviolence want to take some of our time at Tikkun magazine’s 30th anniversary celebration to honor the activists and all those who contributed to this development. If you are reading this, chances are high that you are one such person, whether you did this in spreading the ideas of social change movements, fought for those ideas in your support for Hillary, Bernie, Jill Stein or advanced those ideas in a variety of other ways..

Unfortunately, liberals and progressives will be facing a set of difficult challenges after the November election, no matter who wins (though the challenges will certainly be different, depending on the outcome). None of the likely winners is going to deliver the kind of society we need to heal and repair the damage done to human beings both here and around the world or the damage to the environment, which is why it is imperative that we come together to strategize what’s next for the left. Not only in regard to how to impact future elections, but in how to change consciousness in the society as a whole outside the electoral arena.

We encourage input and participation from the widest possible bandwidth of liberal and progressive voices. We are inviting anyone who believes in the importance of having a vision of what progressives are for to join us as we reflect on and attempt to develop a strategy or shared strategies for the next 4-8 years. People who supported Hillary Clinton and rejoiced at the possibility of a woman becoming the President of the U.S., people who supported Bernie Sanders in the primaries, people who supported Jill Stein, and people who found other paths to advance progressive ideas in past years are hereby invited to attend and participate.

And we will be presenting some of our own ideas about how best to counter the impact of racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic and xenophobic ideas that (sadly) received legitimization in the 2016 election process and hence are likely to be a factor in the mainstream politics of the coming years. But we also want to counter the probable tilt toward the interests of the upper 1% of income earners, the banks, investment companies, insurance companies and the largest corporations which have dominated both major parties in the past many decades. We have strategic ideas on how to do that. We also welcome YOUR ideas about how to speak to the pain and anger surfacing in 2016, not only in the US but in many of the advanced capitalist societies around the world.

A Note on Being a “Spiritual Progressive”: Tikkunand the Metta Center for

Join the Network of Spiritual Progressives

Nonviolence have worked together in the framework of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, and invite you to become members as well www.spirtualprogressives.org/join. By “spiritual” we mean everything about reality that cannot be empirically verified or made subject to measurement — including ethical and aesthetic issues, consciousness itself, love, kindness and generosity, and much more —so atheists and secular humanists and scientists can also be spiritual in our sense of the word. Our Network of Spiritual Progressives has many atheists or secular humanists as well as people from the diversity of the world’s religious and spiritual traditions. We advocate for A New Bottom Line that judges institutions, government policies, our economic lives, our political system, our educational system, in fact, most areas of our lives together in community by the extent to which they maximize our capacities to be loving and kind, generous and caring for each other and caring for the earth. We seek to put the New Bottom Line in place of the “old bottom line” of money and power.

Tentative Schedule

Saturday

PRE CONFERENCE

9:00

Shabbat Service with Rabbi Lerner and Cat Zavis

OR

Meditation with Michael Nagler

REGISTRATION from 9:30-10:30 a.m.

CONFERENCE BEGINS:

10:30 – 10:45

Music and Welcome

10:45-11:00

Opening Ritual and Ceremony to Recognize Standing Rock

11:00 – 11:30

Acknowledging, Celebrating and Receiving each other

11:30 – 12:30

The Roadmap and New Story – Michael Nagler

12:30-1:15

Lunch (Local restaurants, or join Beyt Tikkun in the Parlor Room for a Vegetarian pot-luck IF you bring a main course vegetarian dish (not necessarily vegan) sufficient to feed 10-12 people. Not bread, not cheese–a main course dish only (vegetable or fruit salads also welcome)

1:15

Music

1:30-2:30

Path to a World of Love and Justice - Michael Lerner, Cat Zavis

2:30-2:40

Music/Break

2:40-3:25

Group Exercise #1

Small group discussion

3:25:3:45

Plenary

3:45-4:30

Group Exercise #2

Small group exercises and discussion

4:30-4:50

Plenary

4:50-5:25

Group Exercise #3

Moving Forward

5:25-5:45

Plenary

5:45-6:10

Next Steps and Close (plus Havdalah for those interested)

Sunday

1 p.m.-1:30 Registration

1:30-1:45 Poetry

1:45-6 p.m. Tikkun Award ceremony, music, and celebration –order of awardees to be determined at the event.

Sunday: Tikkun and NSP leaders Rabbi Michael Lerner and Cat Zavis will share reflections on the contemporary reality of Western societies and the changes in consciousness necessary to overcome every form of “demeaning the other” and also overcome the forces that are engaged in destroying the life support system of the planet. And then…

The Tikkun Awards

Anthropologist and 2016 Tikkun Award recipient Nancy Scheper-Hughes.

A major part of Sunday afternoon will be the Tikkun Awards.

This year are we honored to give these awards to recipients that include Academy Award winning filmmaker Oliver Stone; Holly Near the progressive singer-songwriter; Rabbi Arik Ascherman, the chair for 21 years of Rabbis for Human Rights in Jerusalem (he is flying in from Jerusalem to receive the award); Nancy Scheper-Hughes the cultural anthropologist and author of Saints, Scholars and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland, Death without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday life in Brazil, and Commodifying Bodies; Aaron Davidman who wrote and stars (playing 16 different people) in the fabulous play (now also a movie) called “Wrestling Jerusalem”; Fania E. Davis (co-founder and executive director of Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth) and Clayborne Carson, the Stanford professor of history, author of In struggle: SNCC and the Black awakening of the 1960s, Martin’s Dream: My Journey and the Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. A Memoir, and senior editor, The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. Vols. 1-4.

This looks to be an exciting, heartfelt, and critically important weekend. Your participation and engagement in discussions surrounding how we want to create a future that is infused with love for the sacredness of all people, dearly matters. We look forward to strategizing, debating, and joining in sacred community with you and forging a new future together, rooted in the heart and a sense of wonder and healing possibility. Join us!

Be sure to click here to register for this event, you don’t want to miss out. If you already know you want to come, please make reservations at a Berkeley area hotel or find other accommodations.

We so look forward to being with you!

If you can’t come, please help us financially by making a generous donation to Tikkun, www.tikkun.org/donate, so that we can offset the costs of this event.

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One Response to Now What? After the Presidential Election – The Tikkun Strategy Conference and 30th Anniversary Celebration in Berkeley, Ca. Nov. 12 and 13

Bertram Miller
September 12, 2016 at 6:20 am

I hope someday you will return an occasional event like this 30th Anniversary Celebration back to NYC. If you do, I can guarantee that I will attend, as will several other members of my Politics Of Meaning oriented political group (Politics For A Human Community).